Wow, it only took four posts before the Servetus Card was played. That's nearly a record!
Posted on 06/19/2009 7:09:41 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
For the non-Calvinists or anti-Calvinists among us who may worry that this issue of WORLD has several articles about John Calvin, be not afraid: It happens only once every 500 years. July 10 brings the 500th anniversary of John Calvin's birth—and the great theologian, even with his warts, deserves a better press than he has typically received in recent decades.
Calvin was a fallen sinner, as all of us are, but was he especially mean-spirited? He taught that God created the world out of love and loved the world so much that Christ came down from the glorious kingdom of heaven and plunged into this world's muck. Calvin saw God as a generous giver and His mercy as an abundant resource. Jehovah's Witnesses would later insist that heaven has room for only 144,000, but Calvin understood that God's grace is infinite.
Did Calvin emphasize in-group harshness toward the poor and the alien? No: He wrote, "We cannot but behold our own face as it were in a glass in the person that is poor and despised . . . though he were the furthest stranger in the world. Let a Moor or a barbarian come among us, and yet inasmuch as he is a man, he brings with him a looking glass wherein we may see that he is our brother and neighbor." Everyone is created in God's image and worthy of respect.
Did Calvin want us to abstain from all material pleasures? He wrote that God "meant not only to provide for necessity but also for delight and good cheer. . . . Has the Lord clothed the flowers with the great beauty that greets our eyes, the sweetness of smell that is wafted upon our nostrils, and yet will it be unlawful for our eyes to be affected by that beauty, or our sense of smell by the sweetness of that odor?" He opposed any doctrine that "deprives us of the lawful fruit of God's beneficence."
Calvin also opposed doctrines that deprive us of political liberty. His understandings—that God-given laws are superior to those of the state, the king, and any other institution, and that individuals have direct access to the Bible, without dependence on pope or priest—are common now, but compare them to the political and theological theories fashionable before his time. In ancient times, pagan states revered leaders as semi-divine. Those who argued with such bosses were seen as deserving death. In medieval times, the interpretations of church officials often trumped the words of the Bible itself (which few people could read). They identified God's kingdom on earth with a church monopoly, and hanged, burned, or decapitated some with other ideas.
Calvin and other Reformation leaders, though, separated church and state while emphasizing the importance of believers working to lead the state. Calvin contended that, since God reigns everywhere, His followers should be entrepreneurs in every strategic institution, including government, civil society, commerce, media, law, education, the church, and the arts. This emphasis led directly to what has become known as the "Protestant ethic," with its unleashing of individual initiative and its emphasis on hard work in purportedly secular areas. Many kinds of labor are equally worthy, Calvin argued, and those in charge of one activity should not dictate to others.
Calvin's writings also had an implicit anti-statism. Since fundamental law comes from God, obeying the law means obeying God, not necessarily the state. Rebellion against an unlawful state act, led by "lesser magistrates" such as local leaders, is really a justifiable maintenance of true law. One Calvin disciple in 1579 wrote Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos ("Vindication Against Tyrants"), which emphasized the limits of power.
Would freedom ring? The English jurist Blackstone called "the power and jurisdiction of Parliament transcendent and absolute . . . sovereign and uncontrollable." English lawyers joked that "Parliament can do everything except make a woman a man, or a man a woman." (Some of our jurists and legislators are more ambitious.) But generation after generation of Calvinists read Vindiciae and emphasized that government must be under God. According to John Adams, its doctrines greatly influenced Americans of the 1760s and 1770s.
Calvin's birthday comes six days after the Independence Day that owes much to his teaching. Bake a cake and know that Calvin was not against enjoying it.
Think about that for a minute. How could Satan who was created as a perfect creature have a defect? Or Adam? Just by the very definition, he would not be a perfect creature.
James tells us the reason man falls away. We simply lust after the things of this world. And lusting brings forth sin, and sin death. It isn't "free will" that we make a choice to sin or not. Rather we simply lust for something to such a point that we have to sin.
It's like looking at that big screen TV at Best Buy until we just have to have it.
Rome and PETA. Now there is a team. LOL.
You have well identified the Pelagianism (not even Semi) skulking around the Vatican. There is a “capacity of goodness” in the “well-intentioned” hearts of all men according to this heresy from Hell. But, indeed, there is no neutrality. We are dead in trespasses and sin OR we have been pulled through the knot-hole backwards into Life everlasting.
I have noticed that Total Depravity just doesn’t compute with Rome’s frame of mind, as if that is just too harsh a position to take with mankind. But, until they come to grips with that toe-tag dead heart of sin held in every chest, they just will not see how precious that shed blood really was. It always remains a kind of band-aid, repair kit for “slip ups” and “shortcomings”, rather than that blessed saving flood that washes filthy sinners clean.
I'm not the one who is trying to say something about mentally challenged children either so stop trying to tell me I'm saying something that I'm not. I'm sure that God will figure all the issues out with aborted babies, the mentally ill, those on far off islands, and so forth. No one know the mysteries of God but the criteria is that people believe in the Lord Jesus. You can't just believe he was a good guy.
It's the unavoidable result of your reasoning.
If you don't know who is in heaven, how can you tell people to pray to the Saints? How can you pray to Sir Thomas More when you don't even know he's in heaven?
There are many more saints than have been canonized, but the process of canonization allows the Church, at the end, to state with confidence that yes, this person is in Heaven.
Perhaps the good people of that Italian capital recognize a false tradition of men when they see it.
“”Think about that for a minute. How could Satan who was created as a perfect creature have a defect? Or Adam?””
It’s free will,Harley,or God would be forcing His love on us, and even worse-God would be forcing evil on lucifer to be a devil without anything lucifer could have freely done on his own
By saying that God willed evil to exist ,you’re saying God is NOT perfection.
Try digesting this...
That God is Universal Perfection By Saint Thomas Aquinas
AS all perfection and nobility is in a thing inasmuch as the thing is, so every defect is in a thing inasmuch as the thing in some manner is not. As then God has being in its totality, so not-being is totally removed from Him, because the measure in which a thing has being is the measure of its removal from not-being. Therefore all defect is absent from God: He is therefore universal perfection.
2. Everything imperfect must proceed from something perfect: therefore the First Being must be most perfect.
3. Everything is perfect inasmuch as it is in actuality; imperfect, inasmuch as it is in potentiality, with privation of actuality. That then which is nowise in potentiality, but is pure actuality, must be most perfect; and such is God.*
4. Nothing acts except inasmuch as it is in actuality: action therefore follows the measure of actuality in the agent. It is impossible therefore for any effect that is brought into being by action to be of a nobler actuality than is the actuality of the agent. It is possible though for the actuality of the effect to be less perfect than the actuality of the acting cause, inasmuch as action may be weakened on the part of the object to which it is terminated, or upon which it is spent. Now in the category of efficient causation everything is reducible ultimately to one cause, which is God, of whom are all things. Everything therefore that actually is in any other thing must be found in God much more eminently than in the thing itself; God then is most perfect.
Hence the answer given to Moses by the Lord, when he sought to see the divine face or glory: I will show thee all good (Exod. xxxiii, 19).
Like I said...
No, not like you said.
TULIP computes fine, it’s understood.
It’s just rejected as a false tradition of men, which it is.
Wow, it only took four posts before the Servetus Card was played. That's nearly a record!
The depravity of their souls is what prevents a corrupt group like the Vatican from recognizing their own destruction. It’s a condition of their soul similar to the Pharisee of Luke 18. But, they don’t read the Bible, they just suppress it.
“The Pharisee stood and was praying thus to HIMSELF, ‘God, I thank Thee that I am not like the other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax-gatherer. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get. But the tax-gatherer, standing soe distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted.” Go ahead, reject the doctrines that could save. We know you cannot see if you are not given the sight.
*PFFSSSTTSFFSTT!!!*
OK...you owe me a new keyboard....
I suppose they would be the experts on false traditions of men, eh?
So says a demented, megalomaniacal French lawyer.
So what?
AND you violated Irving's Law in the process!
That quote was from Jesus...
Yes, actually.
They have the truth for a comparison, and most of the manure-throwing fashionable iconoclasts who make up these false traditions of men also become the most vicious enemies of the Church founded by Christ.
Yes, in short, the Catholic Church understands her enemies all too well.
If the shoe fits...
From GK Chesterton...
"Calvinism took away the freedom from man, but left it to God. Scientific materialism binds the Creator Himself; it chains up God as the Apocalypse chained the devil. It leaves nothing free in the universe. And those who assist this process are called the "liberal theologians."-GK Chesterton
To know, know, know Him is to love, love, love Him...and I do. {can you hear the music?}
Athanasian Creed
1. Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith;
2. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.
3. And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity;
4. Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.
5. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit.
6. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.
7. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit.
8. The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated.
9. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible.
10. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal.
11. And yet they are not three eternals but one eternal.
12. As also there are not three uncreated nor three incomprehensible, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible.
13. So likewise the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, and the Holy Spirit almighty.
14. And yet they are not three almighties, but one almighty.
15. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God;
16. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God.
17. So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Spirit Lord;
18. And yet they are not three Lords but one Lord.
19. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord;
20. So are we forbidden by the catholic religion to say; There are three Gods or three Lords.
21. The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten.
22. The Son is of the Father alone; not made nor created, but begotten.
23. The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.
24. So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits.
25. And in this Trinity none is afore or after another; none is greater or less than another.
26. But the whole three persons are coeternal, and coequal.
27. So that in all things, as aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.
28. He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity.
29. Furthermore it is necessary to everlasting salvation that he also believe rightly the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
30. For the right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man.
31. God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and man of substance of His mother, born in the world.
32. Perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.
33. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood.
34. Who, although He is God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ.
35. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of that manhood into God.
36. One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.
37. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ;
38. Who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead;
39. He ascended into heaven, He sits on the right hand of the Father, God, Almighty;
40. From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
41. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies;
42. and shall give account of their own works.
43. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.
44. This is the catholic faith, which except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved.
Free will is a sham...it's a lie. You are either a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness. You are either considered one of the wicked or one of the righteous. You are either under the law or you're under grace. There is no "free will" that allows you to bounce back and forth like a ping-pong ball.
"...or God would be forcing His love on us"
Ummmm...excuse me. Isn't that what He did with Paul? The ONLY way we'll accept Him is for God to take a two-by-four to us. You give us far too much credit and God too little.
AS all perfection and nobility is in a thing inasmuch as the thing is, so every defect is in a thing inasmuch as the thing in some manner is not. As then God has being in its totality, so not-being is totally removed from Him, because the measure in which a thing has being is the measure of its removal from not-being. Therefore all defect is absent from God: He is therefore universal perfection.
I would suggest that St Thomas Aquinas is at total odds with St. Augustine's writings:
Please note that St Auginas tends to be more philosophical than theological. He rarely uses scripture and I have never been impressed with his works. Is it any wonder that St Aquinas denied original sin. Augustine wouldn't have made that mistake.
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